mountains once more."

The flier whirled yet again and sped back toward its night's resting-place. Ten miles from it, and five thousand feet up, the static became still again.

Wentworth kicked a smoke-bomb release and whirled the flier about so sharply that his head snapped forward from the sudden centrifugal force.

There was the city.

The flier roared straight for it. Static rattled out of the communicator. One minute. Two. He kicked the smoke-bomb release again. Already the first bomb had hit ground and made a second smoke-signal. Ten miles on, he dropped a third.

The smoke-signals would burn for an hour, and give him a perfect line on the vanishing city. This time it did not vanish. It grew larger and larger, and details appeared, and more details.

It was a unit—a design of infinite complexity, perfectly integrated. Story upon story, with far-flung skyways connecting its turrets, it was a vision of completely alien beauty. It rose ten thousand feet from the skit-trees about its base. Its base was two miles square.

"They build high," said Wentworth grimly, "so they won't use any extra ground they could plant their confounded skit-trees on. I'm going to land short of it, Haynes."

The vertical jets took over smoothly as he cut the drive. The flier slowed, and two blasts forward stopped it dead, and then it descended smoothly. Wentworth had checked not more than a hundred yards from the outermost tower. It appeared to be made of completely seamless metal, incised with intricate decorative designs. Which was incredible.

But the most impossible thing of all was that there was no movement anywhere. No stirring. No shifting. Not even furtive twinklings as of eyes peering from the strangely-shaped window openings. And when the flier landed gently between two circular clumps of skit-trees and Wentworth cut off the jets and turned off even the communicator—then there was silence.

The silence was absolute. Two miles high, near them towered a city which could house millions of people. And it was utterly without noise and utterly without motion in any part.

"And the prince went into the castle," said Wentworth savagely. "He kissed the Sleeping Beauty on the lips, and she opened her eyes with a glad little cry, and they were married and lived 

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